Why WorkCover Wise?

If you have read any of my other articles you may have a bit of an understanding as to why I started WorkCover Wise. But if not, here is my story.

I studied an Allied Health degree at University and because of my background I was able to get a job working at an insurance company in the work cover claims team. This means that I know exactly what occurs inside the walls of these insurers. For the most part, case managers are ordinary people doing their job and they try to do so in a positive way.

The issue is the entire system. Insurers get money if they stop claims within certain times (and this can be big money too). Not only was I part of this, I was actually very good at it. In 2016 I had the highest number of terminations (work cover payments stopped) for the entire year at the insurer I worked at. A lot of these were due to my understanding of the workers’ compensation legislation.

I then spent time in the liability team determining whether a claim would or would not be an accepted claim.

I then moved into a consulting role, where I would provide advice directly to employers on how to manage (see reduce) their workers’ compensation costs. I used all of my knowledge that I obtained at both Uni and working at an insurer, using the quirks in the legislation to help them directly in either reducing the cost of claims or stopping claims from happening all together.

Some of the cases that I successfully* argued and had declined included workplace bullying, physical injuries that happened at work however I was able to argue alternative causation due to evidence. One extremely sensitive claim was a death claim that I assisted in getting rejected. This claim also had media pressure from Worksafe to accept. Most of these claims could have ended up being accepted, had there not been a significant amount of resourcing put into obtaining evidence that the claim was not work related.

*I say succeed, but really when I look back at it there is nothing successful about arguing against the suffering of others in the workplace. In a true sense it was eating away at my sole.

What eventually happened to me however is that I burnt out. I was working long hours during the COVID pandemic, which was made worse by working from home. The pressure kept building, with a constant feeling of being pulled apart in hundreds of different directions. It came on in waves and as soon as I reached boiling point, I would take a week off work to calm down again. Then the pressure would build again and the pattern continued.

Eventually I snapped. I had been seeing a psychologist to try and help deal with the burnout that I was facing, but one day the anxiety, the pain in my chest became too much and I had to stop. My job was destroying me.

The day I stopped and drove to the Dr, I was driving without paying any attention on the road and not really caring of the consequences. It was a horrible place to be.

Here is me, an expert in workers’ compensation, having to make a stress claim? It would be career suicide to even think about it. So I didn’t put in a claim. I resigned. Resigned without a job but the freedom of not having to deal with crippling anxiety every day. Helping large corporations with big budgets argue that an injured worker should not be covered, as if talking about a car door that was scratched, was going against all of my values.

I always thought to myself why there wasn’t there a cost effective service for the injured worker? And so after my condition and resignation, the idea to ‘jump sides’ and support the injured worker was developed. WorkCover Wise was born.